Episode 191: Four Steps Towards Building a More Diverse and Inclusive Company Culture (Interview with Daisy Auger-Dominguez)
What does cutting-edge DEI look like in action? For Daisy Auger-Domínguez, author of the influential book, "Inclusion Revolution", it means shaking off the outdated DEI initiatives that no longer serve us and embracing modern strategies that truly drive systemic change.
In this episode, David Green is joined by Daisy to dive deep into the transformative world of DEI. Together, they explore how her approaches are redefining what it means to foster an inclusive and equitable workplace.
Not only does the conversation cover the evolution of DEI to date and Daisy's unique experience working with top-tier organisations like Warner Bros, Disney, and Google, but topics covered in the discussion also include:
The pitfalls that companies often encounter with traditional DEI efforts and Daisy's recommendations for avoiding these common traps
An overview of the four-step model from "Inclusion Revolution" (Reflect, Vision, Act, Persist) and how these principles can be practically applied to instigate meaningful change
Strategies for HR leaders to effectively leverage analytics and data to align DEI initiatives with broader business objectives
The critical role of deep, genuine engagement with employee feedback to form strategies that go beyond surface-level understanding
Tips on how to maintain momentum and commitment to DEI in the face of resistance or slow progress, ensuring that initiatives are impactful and sustainable
This episode is essential for anyone eager to push the boundaries of traditional DEI work and champion real change within their organisation.
Support for this podcast comes from Crunchr, a platform that integrates an HR data lake with state-of-the-art people analytics. Whether you're an advanced user or just starting out, Crunchr's generative AI co-pilot helps you unlock insights with ease.
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[0:00:00] David Green: Hi, I'm David Green, and you're listening to the Digital HR Leaders podcast. Today, we're diving into the vital world of diversity, equity, and inclusion with a guest who has not only led DEI initiatives at some of the world's most influential companies, like Warner Bros, Disney, and Google, but has also authored the transformative book Inclusion Revolution. Daisy Auger-Dominguez is one of the most influential voices in the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion space. Through her extensive practitioner experience, allied to her consultancy work, she helps organisations shake off outdated frameworks and craft new models that genuinely support DEI. Daisy's book, Inclusion Revolution, which has recently been updated in a second edition, presents a clear and actionable four-step model to achieve lasting change: reflect, vision, act and persist. During my conversation with Daisy, we will explore this four-step model and how it can be applied not just in theory, but in the real-world context of modern organisations; we'll discuss how the field of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion has evolved over the years; identify where many organisations falter in their DEI initiatives; and hear directly from Daisy about the insights and strategies that have shaped her approach.
But of course, no discussion on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion would be complete without talking about data. We'll explore how HR leaders can leverage people analytics to foster reflection and drive effective action, and Daisy will also share advanced techniques for capturing and interpreting the nuanced voices of employees to shape inclusive cultures. So, with all that to cover, let's dive in.
As a ritual here on the show, we start the conversation with a brief introduction to guests and their career background. But today, I'm going to switch up a little bit. Obviously, in addition to sharing a little bit about your background, can you also share what enticed you into the world of DEI as well?
[0:02:21] Daisy Auger-Dominguez: Sure. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me, David, and I love starting at the beginning because we all have our origin stories. I, I think like many other DEI practitioners of my era, if you will, landed in a DEI role because this wasn't a time when DEI roles were as common as you see them now. And I started my career as a credit risk analyst at Moody's Investor Service. I had a degree in international relations and women's studies, I had a master's in public policy, I had for quite some time been pursuing those studies in that space around identity and race and class. But I landed this job at Moody's and was a credit risk analyst for six years. I then managed our global foundation. And it was in running our global foundation that our CFO noticed my leadership, she saw my interests.
I was also, as one of the few employees of colour, I had long been witnessing talent like mine and of other people of colour, and really just underrepresented talent in the organisation, quietly sidelined and marginalised. And so I was the one that would go to the black MBA conferences, the Asian MBA conferences, the Latino MBA conferences. I was really keen on bringing, at that point, more diverse people to the organisation, because that was what I thought was necessary to change the hearts and minds of people. And so I was tapped to lead the company's first Diversity and Inclusion function. And that was certainly not something that I sought after, I didn't even know those were roles, right? Like I said, this was in 2007 when most of the diversity roles in the finance industry, which was the industry that I was in, and in other industries, quite frankly, were really focused on recruiting.
This was around the time that D&I, there wasn't a D&I, there was just diversity of recruiting. And so, I was moved into the HR function to lead this role, and that was my introduction also into HR. And frankly, I kind of went kicking and screaming because back then, HR, not back then actually, still now, has always had the bad reputation. It's the place you go to when you're in trouble. They're just those people. And I was really quickly humbled, going into the HR function, how much I didn't know I didn't know about what they did, and how they kept organisations afloat. And so, I came in with the hubris of having been a credit risk analyst and in the foundation and knowing a lot of the organisation, which helped me frankly shortcut into my learnings on D&I. But I had to very quickly understand how did all the HR pieces fit together, right, what did compensation do; what did benefits do; what did learning and development do; what did recruitment do; what did all of these functions do to ensure employees could thrive, so that I could then understand my role in helping them be more inclusive and more diverse.
So, it's that. It's partly my lived experience, it's partly my professional experience. And a lot of what informed my early work, and still does is, having been an only for much of my career, having been the first and an only, having had to battle the label of being a diversity hire myself, having had to fight to demonstrate my worth when others around me didn't, and the misnomer that I didn't deserve to be where I was and watching others do that. And so for me, it comes from that very deep experience of knowing what it's like to feel excluded and not part of. But then, it also comes from that professional experience of understanding how organisations work, how the systems work, and pragmatically figuring out what needs to get fixed one piece at a time.
[0:06:27] David Green: So given all your extensive career and expertise in the field of DEI, how have you seen the field evolve over the years? And again, for me, it's almost like it's evolved as HR has evolved. And as HR has become more of a strategic partner to the business, DEI seems to have really moved up the strategic agenda as well, although I know there's troubling time for DEI, particularly in America, I think, at the moment.
[0:06:53] Daisy Auger-Dominguez: And quite frankly, I have seen so many ebbs and flows of this work over the last two decades that there's a bit of wisdom and experience of knowing, well, this too shall pass, but also recognising what's different about this moment. So, I'll start with the standard journey of DEI, really. This was work that began as affirmative action efforts, following, in the US in particular, civil rights movement, affirmative action in the 1970s, the 1980s. It was a legal requirement for organisations to diversify their workforces. Then it moved into a business case-driven initiative because of the so-called war for talent, which having been in the field of HR for so long now, I feel like there's always a war for talent, it's just how you're defining it. But that was very much in the 1990s.
Then, I would say in the 2000s, it went into more of the right thing to do, right? And I should say that throughout all of these cycles, whenever there's been an economic decline, usually these are the first functions to go. So, all of these elements, I always say, you're thinking it's not a standard chart because you're seeing the macro and the micro events happening and all of that impacting D&I. And then I would say in 2020, as we all lived that period of the pandemic and the global racial reckoning, which wasn't just in the US, right? This was felt all throughout. And I would say, this was the first time where we were talking about Diversity and Inclusion with the same energy and pronouncement.
D&I, gender is a global element. There's a lot of things, when I speak to my colleagues in Europe or in Asia or in the Middle East, they're like, "Well, the US talks about D&I very differently than we do". I was like, "Yes, but gender is pretty consistent". Immigration, right, we may focus more on race and ethnicity, but immigration patterns, ageism, all of these elements are rather global. But race, all of a sudden, and identity around race was really what became the centre point of this conversation. And I think for many of us, me included, there was a moment of, "Oh, maybe this is it. Maybe this is what we've been all fighting for".
I wrote Inclusion Revolution in that period as a way to honour what I'd experienced and what I've learned, to manifest what I had long envisioned in my own career, radically inclusive and equity-minded workplaces, where leaders and team members are empathetically anti-racist, where creativity and innovation comes from everywhere, where all aspects of our identities are represented equally at all levels across the organisation, not just at the top, not just at the bottom, but throughout; and where all aspects of our identities are represented, not just equally, but in safe, fair, and dignified work norms. And we started using language that we had never used in corporate America, like "White Supremacy" in the US, right, like racism. These were all no-nos before. And now, and not just now, in the last couple of years, we've started seeing some of that retrenchment again, if you will.
Some of it has been economic again. When the economy slows down, what gets cut, a lot of it has been politically driven, and we're starting to see it also from a legal perspective and legal pushback. And in the US, Roe v Wade, the Supreme Court decision on affirmative action, all of these rights that had long been fought for. And it's not just that they're being stripped away, but that there is, not for the first time, there has always been pushback against D&I. And so, I think what we're experiencing right now is a sense of, there's fear and there's loneliness and there's uncertainty. I'm certainly not going to say that I don't worry about what's happening, I certainly do, but I take a very different perspective because of what I've seen.
I feel a lot more supported and content with the idea that there are a lot of people, like you and others, who are talking about this and who understand that this is necessary. And there's also the very clear reality of our demographics. There's a very clear reality of who customers are and what people want out of products, ideas, organisations that they work with. And so I don't believe that this work is going to stop. I believe that this is a moment for re-evaluation, I think this is a moment for reflection, and this is a moment for tinkering with what can be improved, because there's always room for improvement. But this is not a moment to stop the work, it's a moment to continue.
[0:11:57] David Green: Where do you see most organisations going wrong with their DEI initiatives? And maybe we'll talk about what goes wrong, but maybe where do you see organisations that are doing this well? What helps you succeed?
[0:13:04] Daisy Auger-Dominguez: Sure, and frankly the two go hand in hand.
[0:13:08] David Green: Of course, you sometimes have to fail, don't you?
[0:13:11] Daisy Auger-Dominguez: Exactly. I'm very honest and humble in that I fail all the time. And all of my learnings come from every time that I've failed and I have realised, I'm like, "Oops, let me try that again". And I think that for a lot of organisations, some of what can become frustrating for those of us who have done this work is that we're seeing the same mistakes happen over and over again. And I think we're humans, we're fallible, we're pattern-makers, we try to do the same thing, we follow what others are doing. But for a lot of organisations, I think some of the biggest lapses are in lack of focus, right, not having clarity on what you're trying to solve for and how you're going to go solve for it; misalignment with organisational goals; strategic planning. You think about all of the effort that goes into most organisations to build strategic plans, well, why is D&I not part of that? How is that not included? And I've seen it over and over again. We'll talk about that later. I was like, "No, this is, if you want something to be successful, it's got to be part of what you're saying is the core of your work". And resource allocation, it's not enough resources. You tend to hire one person in most organisations.
I mean, in the summer of 2020, David, I can't tell you how many head-hunters reached out to me trying to find D&I leaders, because everybody thought it was like, "Well, the solution is to hire a D&I leader". I was like, "Well, that's one of the solutions. But first of all, what are you trying to solve for? Second, who needs to do this work? And third, what are the resources that this person needs to do this?" And hiring one person to solve a systemic issue is not ever going to be enough. And you mentioned it earlier, it was in my early learnings as a D&I professional, sitting in the HR function, seeing the connections around the employee life journey, was where I realised, "Well, if we just focus on diversity hiring, all we're doing is creating a revolving door of talent". But if we're not focusing on how we onboard them, how we equip them to come into organisations that are sometimes hostile to them, if we do not consider how do we integrate this into our learning and development programmes and our growth programmes and our promotion programmes, if we do not look at pay equity as a systemic issue holistically, and the benefits that we provide, who do they benefit? Who do they not benefit?
It's that holistic view that is often missing in this work, and I write about this in Inclusion Revolution. And I say that many organisations, they get trapped into the pitfalls of having uninformed leadership teams that are taking charge of DEI decisions, but they disregard the expertise of the actual DEI professionals that they hire. And they make these decisions in a bubble, if you will, based on what they're reading, who they're talking to, what they're seeing, and not leaning on the expertise of those that they have put in place to do this work. And then, you see this continuous turnover of highly competent talent of colour and underrepresented talent, and you wonder, "Well, what happened?" You also, when you are building your work, if you will, you misdiagnose what are diversity and culture problems as these separate problems, right? So, you fail to recognise them as stemming from leadership and management decisions. They didn't just happen, right? They are the output of decisions that have been happening for years and years in an organisation.
Then, I would say the last bit of it is this misguided emphasis on quick wins, right? And that's why diversity recruiting has always been so attractive, because that's the one piece, and I know we'll talk about analytics, but that's the one thing that you can measure very quickly and say, "Well, we just hire these folks". But you don't spend enough time on attrition, you don't spend enough time on all of the elements. So, when you look at all of that and then you look at it from a management competency lens, you realise if this is integrated into management competency and how we measure, grow and develop our managers, then we have an actual chance of getting this work right.
[0:17:32] David Green: That's when you create the change, isn't it, rather than just as you said, focusing on recruiting and maybe improving? Even if you're recruiting 10% of your organisation a year, you're not actually making a massive difference overall, even if it's just -- you shouldn't just be looking at representation, of course, but even if it's just around representation, it's going to take some time to make the difference. And if you're not creating the right culture and environment for people, then they're just going to leave anyway, and you're not creating that change moving forward as well.
I think it brings us nicely to your book, Inclusion Revolution. The model you present in the book consists of four steps: reflection, visualisation, action, and persistence. We'll go into each step in a little bit more detail throughout the conversation. But I'm curious to understand first, how did you come across the four-step model that frames the basis of your book and the ethos that you've already referred to?
[0:18:25] Daisy Auger-Dominguez: Yeah, I think like many of the frameworks that we lean on through trial and error, it was really just recognising over time throughout my career that these were the same elements I would see applied time and again in thoughtful, successful, strategic planning and execution. Using perhaps different language and terminology, but fundamentally any good strategic plan begins with a reflection and collection of data and understanding what you're trying to solve for. And then, I added the vision piece because to me, a good strategic plan is all about vision, it's about what you're trying to solve for, what does that look like? I think of it as backwards calendaring, right? This is where we want to be and these are the things that we need to do to get there. And I added the last element around persist, again because this is work that will always be pushed against, right?
Whether we like it or not, and for some of us, and I coach and mentor a lot of D&I practitioners, many of them in their early stages of their career, and for many of us, I've told them, I was like, "I've been where you are. I have believed so fully that what I am doing is right. I think that there is no wrong to this, that you're either with me or you're against me". But I have learned through practice, I have learned through failure that I may not always be right and that there may be areas that we need to adjust and that philosophically, you may not agree with me, but we can get to a place where we can do what's right for an organisation, both for its people and for its mission, for its values, for its products. And so I have learned to listen and to iterate and to push against what may not seem like is in alignment with where I'm going, but in order to make it better, I need to understand it. And I think that the one element that is missing so deeply in all of this work is the ability to build shared understanding. We may not all agree on the same things, but we can build shared understanding about what's important and valuable for all of us. And that's the persistence piece, that's the, "I'm going to put one foot in front of the other", and that's the persistence piece.
So, it's years and years of iterating on those elements and realising that that four-step model, I don't know about you, but I like to see things in boxes. I'm a wonk when it comes to strategy and planning, and so what does that look like from step to step; where do I tinker; where do I continue; and where do I recentre when I need to think about what happens next?
[0:21:14] David Green: So, when it comes to DEI, what steps can HR or DEI leaders take to help? You quote Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky in the book, "Get off the dance floor and go to the balcony", and reflect on the current state of their DEI in the organisations for the people that are listening to this episode, and align their efforts with the business's overarching goals.
[0:21:39] Daisy Auger-Dominguez: I'm a big fan of Heifetz and Linskey's work. And I talk about "Getting off the dance floor and go to the balcony" in Inclusion Revolution as a lens for leaders and managers to think about why they do what they do and how to do it. And so, getting on the balcony is really being able to look at the work holistically, because goals are necessary, milestones are measurable, but the real transformation comes when you align them with the spirit of why it's important to hire, retain, and engage a diverse workforce. And before you do that, you have to reflect. You have to do that work for yourself on what you and others are experiencing. You have to get clear on what you want to achieve, and also the role that you want to play, because we all have a role to play and it can shift, right? You can lead from the front of the room, you can lead from the back of the room, you can lead from the balcony, you can lead from the dance floor.
I often ask folks when we're talking about reflecting to ask yourself, "What is one thing I could be doing better to prioritise Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in my behaviours, in my interpersonal relationships, and in my decision-making?" We spend a lot of time looking at this work very broadly, and it's so much to solve for that we just don't even know where to start. It's like, just one thing, what does that look like? The balcony is the practice of gaining this clearer perspective on the bigger picture by distancing yourself from the action, from the dancing, if you will. So, it's really asking, "What's going on here? What are the operational pressures? Where are the pain points of this work?" Where is it that we need to tinker and where is it that we need to, I think of it as solving pragmatic problems, one problem at a time, not all of it. But it's being able to lift up so that you don't look at it anymore from just these quick-fix approaches, but you see the whole picture or most of the picture, if you will.
Then you can get pulled into the dance floor, which is where the real sore spots are, where the moments are. And going to the dance floor sometimes is like being in a team meeting where you're bombarded by employee demands and requests and concerns. And everyone's asking, and you have those moments, I don't know about you, but I've had plenty of those moments where I'm like, "Oh goodness, I can't solve everything for everyone right now, and I can't see the forest from the trees, because everybody has demands, and they all seem worthy, they all seem necessary". And that's when I say, "I need to lift up and really see what's happening. I need to collect the data from the dance floor, but I need to lift up and see, okay, what needs to be solved for now? How can it get solved for? How do we get to a place where we can actually address what needs to be addressed?" And I am operating from that lens of, I've collected the data, I've done my own reflections, and now I can solve for the pieces that need to be solved for pragmatically, one at a time.
[0:24:51] David Green: How can HR leaders utilise their people data maybe better than they currently are, and focus their analytics efforts to facilitate this reflection?
[0:25:53] Daisy Auger-Dominguez: Goodness. I mean, I think we do it all the time and sometimes we just don't do it intentionally enough. Having led HR teams, I can tell you, we have access to so much data, but it's in the analysis, it's in trying to figure out what are we actually trying to solve for? I would say the first thing that I always ask my team is, how do we understand the current landscape; how do we utilise our people data to get a clear picture of what the organisation's current state is when it comes to your workforce composition, your hiring practices, your promotion rate, your employee feedback to identify the areas that need improvement? And in employee feedback, I'll say this, because this is an area that I talk about this at Inclusion Revolution, we lean often on employee feedback from surveys and data that we gather. And organisations that are doing this holistically, you'll cut it across race and gender, and you'll look at what the difference is.
But often, we don't realise what are the gaps in people actually telling you the truth, of not just diversity fatigue, which is a common concept that we know, or even survey fatigue, but it's the areas that are limiting people from actually telling you the truth. And I'll share this example. This happened at Disney, this happened at Google, but I would often present data cut across demographics and gender to our senior leadership team, and I would find that for Latinos, and I happen to be Latina, so it's a data set that I understand a bit closely, a bit more closely than others, the data was often sort of in the middle, and they either weren't very happy, or they weren't very sad, but they were sort of always this in the middle. And I remember sharing this with a senior executive once and she turned to me and she said, "Well, have we ever thought about the fact that for most of the Latinos, US-based Latinos who are answering these questions, many of us have just been taught to just be content with where we are? We are working in workplaces where having a job and having benefits is, for many of us who are immigrants, our parents' highest aspiration. So, we're not going to rock the boat. We're not going to say the things that are truly needed".
So, it's in that data gathering and in that data analysis that you get the real elements of what needs to be solved for. And many times, and I learned this at Google, the first time that we ever presented our employee survey data across race and gender was eye-opening for so many employees, because before that, we used to present it as kind of an us versus them, right, the people of colour and the white people. What does that tell you? That simply tells you that this amorphous group of folks seem to not be unhappy, but you don't know why or for what reason. Once we started cutting that across inclusivity data, I remember the first time, and I wrote about this at Inclusion Revolution, with a white male executive, a friend of mine, who worked side by side with me, looked at me, and for the first time realised, how is it that your lived experience here is so dramatically different from mine? And he said, "I'm embarrassed that I had never seen that before until I saw this data". And we made it come alive through data.
That's why I'm a big fan, like you are, of data and analytics, because that is where we uncover the things that we don't want to tell ourselves every day. That is when we uncover the true sore spots, what's happening in those dance floors, what's happening on the ground in organisations, and I think that's the role of HR. And then once you look at this data, this is the data that you use to set inclusive goals, based on SMART goals. You align with your data, your specific measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound SMART goals with the gaps that you're trying to reduce in an organisation. And from those goals, then you can build reflective practices, right? You can use those goals and that data to encourage your leaders and your employees to reflect on how they do what they do every day and how that helps meet those goals. So, you're leaning on data to influence behaviour and actions, and that's the role of HR. That's what leads you to build facilitated conversations about what needs to get solved for; that's what leads you to think about how do you measure progress and how do you reflect on what's working and what doesn't; how do you ensure that the actions are not just organisational but are actually personal? You're setting meta goals that then go similar, all the way to, "What do I, Daisy Auger-Dominguez, as employee X doing X in the organisation, what role do I play in ensuring that I meet that goal for the organisation from a Diversity and Inclusive lens?"
[0:30:48] David Green: What are some of the other data that we collect or some of the other methods or practices that you would recommend for leaders to augment these other data sources, the traditional data sources that we would look at, like surveys and other HR and recruiting data?
[0:31:06] Daisy Auger-Dominguez: Sure. Well, I'll tell you one that it's one that we often talk about, but that we don't often think about as a behavioural change element, but it's compensation data. In the summer of 2020, one of the biggest items that came to the forefront was pay and equity. Like any organisation, when I was a Vice, we conducted pay equity studies and we would do them annually. Then we eventually started doing them biannually, because at one point we had moved away from it being an annual exercise to something that my team did every single time there was a significant action within the organisation, sort of merit increases, promotional increases, new hires, which in the 2020s with the Great Resignation and the Great Attrition, we were hiring all the time.
Two of the elements that I was most proud of was just how it wasn't being driven purely by me, for example. I had a highly competent, incredibly talented Head of Compensation, and eventually total rewards, who ran a team who were constantly running numbers. Every time decisions were being made, we would look at it against our levels and our bands and making sure that people were getting paid equally, that were doing the same job. But where the behaviour change comes is when HR is not the one driving it, but when it's the business asking for it and when it's the business driving it. And I would often have my leaders questioned by folks in the organisation. And so, I would inevitably get a call from someone saying, it was like, "Well, your person just said that I can't pay this person this much because it's inequitable. Well, I need to push against this, and whatnot". And I would tell you nine out of ten times, I would always support my team and I'd say I'm like, "What they told you is right and that's how it goes".
But there was one case where I had, it was actually a Finance Manager who pushed back against my Head of Compensation saying, "I know that the ranges that I'm given are what you're telling me are equitable, but here's why this would be wrong". And this was someone obviously who, finance background, so he had done his own analysis, "If I hire this woman at this rate now, which is what you're telling me, she's going to come in making significantly less. And the next merit increase is only, it's in about two to three months, but she will not be eligible for it because she's a new hire, which will put her significantly under the line for an equitable piece. So, what I'm asking is that you give me that, that you allow me to -- not that you give, I didn't give money, right, it's their budget -- but that you allow me to add that extra amount to her band so that she will be at an equitable rate to the rest". And that was an extra, and I remember he looked at me and he said, "Well, Daisy, you're always asking us to be equitable". I was like, "I'm applying this".
It was a moment of tremendous joy. My team was really angry, because they were just like, "Well, we want to do it". And I was like, "I appreciate it", but they've actually taken the analysis an extra level and they're doing exactly what we've asked them, to use data to make inclusive and thoughtful decisions about their teams that will impact, not just their performance but how they feel about work, how they're engaging with each other and how fair they believe our workforce to be". And so that's one example, again, of all of the elements of all of the data that we dance in, if you will, all day long that can be used not just to change the outcome, but the actual behaviours and practices in an organisation.
[0:34:34] David Green: And I get that was a good example of it, actually. But I guess this is where we come to the "act" step of your model, the action piece, which of course is so important. You have all these insights, but you need to act on them. How can HR leaders get started with taking the insights, turn them into actual strategies that can be scaled across the organisation; and as you said, how do they make sure that it's not just -- how do they get business stakeholders to take this seriously and take action?
[0:35:02] Daisy Auger-Dominguez: Well, you always start with management. You've got to know your team, you've got to understand what their goals are, what are their aspirations, what are their pressure points, what are they trying to achieve? You need to understand your managers, what do they need to learn, what holds them back from doing this work? Because the better that you understand what the priorities of the organisation are, and also how your managers and leaders work, the better that you can help them create an environment where they ultimately achieve what their goals are and understand what they're all trying to do together. You know, I will tell you the standard approaches are to change everything across the employee -- to consider and investigate everything across the employee life cycle, from recruiting to performance management to feedback practices; how do you help?
I'll add one more to that because I nearly devoted an entire chapter to onboarding. It's one of my favourite subjects. It's one of the things that I think we don't spend enough time on, but we spend all of this time courting people. We spend all of this time finding them, getting them excited about coming to work, and then we throw them to the wolves, right? We're like, "Go and succeed if you may". But we don't spend enough time helping people decode what's it like to succeed in your organisation? What do office politics, because every organisation has office politics, look like? What goes said and what goes unsaid? What's the language that's used? Who influences and how do they influence in the organisation? How do you help remove barriers for people to perform at their best? You do this throughout onboarding and you do this throughout coaching, but you do this also throughout modelling behaviours in an organisation.
We spend a lot of time talking about processes and policies in organisations. Not all, some would rather not have any. But the fact of the matter is that, and we saw this during the pandemic, we were solving for things that we had never experienced in our lives. And what's the first thing that happens when someone brings you a problem that you've never heard? You're like, "Well, someone should have an answer somewhere, right? There should be a process somewhere, there should be a policy somewhere". Well, we don't spend enough time revising what those policies are. When every organisation has an employee handbook, when was it created? 20 years ago; 100 years ago? When was it last refreshed? When was it made modern so that it addresses what the current needs of an organisation are, and so that your employees can know?
My dream is that every organisation, I know we're all terrified of AI, but my dream is that every organisation would have a chatbot for their employee handbook where any question that you have about, how do I solve for X; how do I build this; you can ask a question and you will get what your organisation's perspective and lens is. And this is one of the many ways that HR can help their employees. And not just their employees, but also their leaders, because you're lifting up from leaders so that they can actually lead, instead of trying to figure out and dissect that random little practice that they can't even figure out. And fundamentally, the one area, and it's not just HRs, and I always say this is not just an HR leaders' responsibility, it's a combined responsibility of HR and leadership to hold people accountable for their behaviours and practices.
We often say, "These are values, these are principles, this is what you get measured against, this is where you get supported". But we know that we don't always hold everyone accountable to the same bar. And this is where consistency in practice ensures that people believe what you say you're going to do. And if I behave this way, these are going to be the consequences and also these are going to be the rewards.
[0:38:42] David Green: So, Daisy, as we sort of begin to wrap up, if you could give one core piece of advice to aspiring HR leaders and DEI professionals or champions that may be listening to this episode, what would you say to them to ensure that they go beyond surface-level initiatives and towards meaningful systemic change?
[0:39:04] Daisy Auger-Dominguez: Well, this may sound counterintuitive, but what I'm going to say is that leadership today is mind-bending. We have heightened expectations to address some of the world's most complex societal issues, and we can't solve it all. And so, if you're feeling overwhelmed, I think you need to prioritise self-care and reflection. You have to understand that you can't effectively lead others if you're burnt out, and you have to focus on what's genuinely vital to you and your organisation, because not every battle is yours to fight. You don't have the expertise to weigh in on everything, and you shouldn't, but you can make a more substantial impact by focusing on issues that align closely with the soul of your business and your culture. And that means that you need to constantly engage in dialogue with employees and stakeholders to understand their perspectives, their sore spots, and where empathy and co-creation and collaboration are necessary.
[0:40:01] David Green: Daisy, this is a question we're asking everyone in this series, and please feel free to maybe reiterate and summarise some of the things that you've already said around this point, or maybe share a story that will bring it to life. So, the question we're asking our guests is, how can HR leaders use analytics to uncover and address inclusivity gaps?
[0:40:21] Daisy Auger-Dominguez: You have to make it a business priority like any other, which means that you have to set targets, you have to hold people accountable, and you have to ensure that you're consistent in your efforts. Lean on your data, lean on your practices, make sure that it is aligned with your strategic planning, your strategic focus, your communications, and that it's a priority like any other.
[0:40:42] David Green: Yeah, I think that link to the strategic planning is so important, isn't it? Because then people care about it…
[0:40:47] Daisy Auger-Dominguez: Yeah.
[0:40:48] David Green: … if they can see it having a positive impact on whatever it is that you're trying to achieve as an organisation. Daisy, firstly, thank you very much for being a guest on the show, I've really enjoyed our conversation. I would thoroughly recommend your book as well, Inclusion Revolution, to anyone. I've had many people quote it to me over the years since you published the first edition.
[0:41:08] Daisy Auger-Dominguez: Oh, thank you.
[0:41:09] David Green: Can you let listeners know how they can stay in touch with you, contact you, maybe follow you on social media, I think you've got your own website as well, and just learn more about your amazing work in DIY?
[0:41:19] Daisy Auger-Dominguez: Oh, well first of all, thank you so much again, David, for having me. I always say my community is LinkedIn, so you can always find me on LinkedIn, on Instagram, @daisyaugerdominguez, and on my website. But I communicate much more frequently on LinkedIn. I love talking about work and how do we make this this grand experiment of working together work well. Thank you so much.